Posts Tagged ‘automatic spending cuts’

A return to the statutory spending caps in fiscal 2016 would require the Air Force to find $10 billion in savings from the service’s original spending plans, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said last week. “Ten billion is a big chunk of money and it would mean every part of our Air Force would be touched in some way,” James told the Dayton Daily News on the same day she toured Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. “It’s impossible to predict what that means for Wright-Patterson,” she said, but it could affect research programs at the Dayton-area installation and rekindle the possibility that civilian employees are furloughed …

The Army will be forced to eliminate about 14,000 soldiers as a direct result of the Budget Control Act spending caps which are prompting the service to shrink its active-duty force to 450,000 personnel, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel Allyn told the Senate Armed Services’ Readiness Subcommittee last week. “[Sequestration] will increase significantly the involuntary separation of officer and non-commissioned [NCO] leaders who have steadfastly served their country through the last 13 years of war,” Allyn said. Complying with the spending caps will require the involuntary separation of about 2,000 soldiers annually, including officers and NCOs …

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Thursday rejected the fiscal 2016 budget resolution approved by the House that would allow the Pentagon to exceed its statutory spending cap by adding billions of dollars into its war funding account. “Current proposals to shoehorn [DOD’s] base budget funds into our contingency accounts would fail to solve the problem, while also undermining basic principles of accountability and responsible, long-term planning,” Carter told a meeting of the Chiefs of Mission at State Department headquarters. The budget blueprint adopted by House Republicans on Wednesday would add $38 billion to DOD’s $58 billion request for the department’s overseas contingency operations account …

The House on Wednesday opted for a fiscal 2016 budget resolution intended to attract the support of defense hawks, adopting a funding blueprint that sidesteps the Budget Control Act cap on defense spending by adding $38 billion to the Pentagon’s war account. After employing a rarely used procedure allowing lawmakers to vote on competing budgets, House Republicans embraced an alternative to the plan passed by the Budget Committee that relaxes a requirement to offset about half of the funds added to DOD’s overseas contingency operations account …

The fiscal 2016 budget resolutions the House and Senate are poised to approve this week signal significant support among Republican lawmakers for spending plans that flout the Budget Control Act limits for DOD. On Monday, the House Rules Committee approved a special procedure allowing the House to take up competing budget resolutions, including an alternative to the blueprint passed last week in committee allowing national security spending to exceed the $523 billion statutory cap without any offset …

President Obama’s vow last week not to sign any fiscal 2016 appropriations bills that adhere to the statutory spending caps likely is intended to prompt a deal with congressional Republicans that would relax the limits for defense and non-defense spending. Conversely, the president’s pledge may force an impasse that results in a series of continuing resolutions and, possibly, a government shutdown, reported CQ. “I will not, and I’ve been very clear,” Obama said of signing bills that follow the Budget Control Act limits …

One area the Pentagon should target to slash spending is its civilian workforce, four defense analysts said March 16 at a Cato Institute forum. The number of civilian workers has grown since 2009, even as the size of the armed forces has been shrinking, said Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The Pentagon has not kept good records of the number of civilian workers it has, Eaglen pointed out, making it difficult to craft plans to roll back the size of the workforce. Conducting a round of base closures would be another way to find budget savings, the experts said …

The fiscal 2016 budget resolution unveiled Tuesday by the House Budget Committee charts a delicate compromise between the intense push by defense hawks to raise DOD’s budget above the statutory cap and the desire by fiscal conservatives to stick to the spending limits. The committee recommends exceeding the defense spending cap by $39 billion in FY 2016, but because it relies on the Pentagon’s war funding account and a special reserve fund for the extra money, many defense advocates in the House balked at the proposal, reported CQ. Senate Armed Services Chair John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has campaigned fervently for increased defense spending, on Tuesday said he would consider the plan, even though earlier he had described the use of DOD’s overseas contingency operations account as a gimmick …

The approach employed in the House’s draft budget resolution to raise fiscal 2016 DOD spending above the statutory cap may help the department in the short term, but it still would leave defense officials facing uncertainty about the size of their budget beyond next year, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord said Tuesday at an industry conference. “I appreciate the attempt to find some way to help us, but I think that we need a better solution than that one,” McCord said. The House’s plan, which relies on inflating the department’s overseas contingency operations (OCO) account to provide much-needed budget relief, could allow DOD to get through the next fiscal year, but it still would leave officials unsure whether “we are going to live with the law, get what we want or have all of our money shoved into OCO …

If the fiscal 2016 budget resolution fails to provide spending beyond the statutory cap for DOD, lawmakers may use the Pentagon’s overseas contingency operations (OCO) account, which is not subject to the cap, to provide the department more funding, Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters Monday. There are “a number of options that are being looked at,” he said, reported the Hill. “We’re just going to have to take it step by step and see.” Thornberry told reporters he and other committee members have discussed the possibility of increasing defense spending with members of the House Budget Committee …